Dawn of a New Age of New Media / 3 conferences discuss future of film, music

Benny Evangelista, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 8, 2000

The Napster debate is about more than just copyright laws, technology and Metallica.

It's about metaphysics. It's about a "celestial jukebox."

And it's about how men think differently than women.

Esoteric as those themes may sound, speakers at two Bay Area new media conferences this month say taking the Napster discussion to a higher plane is crucial in helping entertainment industry executives adapt to changes being wrought by the digital revolution.

"This Napster thing is on a lot of people's minds, but we don't want them to be embroiled in a debate over whether Napster is right or wrong," said Andrew Keen, executive producer of MB5 2000, a three-day new media conference that starts tonight in Emeryville.

"We're asking people to think a little bit ahead, to get beyond Napster and Scour and imagine the future, what the media business will be like five years down the line," said Keen.

Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, no stranger to metaphysical thinking, will kick off the conference at the Ex'pression Center for New Media in Emeryville with a keynote address.

The conference is expected to draw more than 500 people, an exclusive crowd of music and film company executives willing to fork over the $1,999 registration price to expand their minds and learn about new media technology companies.

Another participant tonight is Jim Griffin, a music industry visionary who will deliver the keynote speech at the three-day CMJ ChangeMusic San Francisco Festival starting next Friday.

"Music is undergoing a transition from a product to a service," said Griffin, chief executive of Cherry Lane Digital Inc., a technology consulting firm in Los Angeles.

The CMJ ChangeMusic conference, at the Hotel Nikko, will feature panels on topics like Internet radio and how artists can use the Web. A similar event earlier this year in Seattle drew about 1,500 music industry executives, artists and fans.

And the following week, at Gavin.com's "Music on the Net" conference scheduled for Sept. 20 to 22 in San Francisco, the top technology gurus at BMG, EMI and Universial Music Group will talk about how they are trying to "out-Napster" Napster.

The popularity of online file swapping programs like Napster and Scour have caused established record and film companies to go to court hoping to protect their valuable copyrights to music and movies.

Just this week, a federal judge ruled that online music portal MP3.com willfully violated copyright laws and ordered the company to pay up to $250 million in damages to Universal Music Group.

But consumers' widespread embrace of digital music should also be a signal that those same entertainment industry leaders have to start thinking outside of the box, literally the plastic boxes in which CDs are packaged, said Chris Gladwin, chief executive officer of a Chicago music subscription service startup called Full Audio Inc.

Until about six months ago, record industry executives remained skeptical that there was a mass market for music downloaded in only digital form, he said.

"Then came Napster" and its more than 20 million users, Gladwin said. "It confirmed undeniably that large quantities of consumers will consume digital music."

And unlike when the record companies convinced consumers that CDs were better than vinyl records, this time the consumers are driving the change, Keen said.

"This revolution of digital sound has not been created from above, it's been created from below," he said. "It's all about empowerment. There's a fundamental new industry developing around the power of the consumer."

Once moved beyond the physical, Griffin said music can evolve into what he likes to promote as the "celestial jukebox."

"The celestial jukebox . . . is the notion that we will ultimately have access to what we want, wherever we want it and whenever we want it," said Griffin, a former Geffen Records executive.

"The transition will be a lot like the one that happened in the banking world," he said. "We would have never gone to Europe without travelers checks 20 years ago. Today, we use credit cards and ATM cards, relying on the 'just-in-time' arrival of customized amounts of money."

And Griffin believes music executives need to start thinking less like men and more like women.

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"As men, we tend to believe more in selling someone something for $15 and transferring it to their possession without ever learning their names," said Griffin, who believes that as the market shifts from selling plastic products to offering digital music services, the relationship with the customer will play a bigger role.

"Women understand the value of starting a relationship that never ends. There's too many men in our business."

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